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Then follows a subsidiary, but the principal subject returns relentlessly. The episode in B major gives pause for breathing. It has a hint of Meyerbeer. But again with smothered explosions the Polonaise proper appears, and all ends in gloom and the impotent clanking of chains.
"It is the story of a bad man and a bad woman," she said; "Geoffrey, why do you read bad things? They bring bad conditions." Geoffrey smiled. He was wondering whether the company of the fictitious Chrysanthème was more demoralizing than that of the actual Mme. Laroche Meyerbeer, with whom his wife had been that day for a picnic lunch. "Besides, it isn't fair," his wife continued.
Gruneisen, the author of a brief memoir of Meyerbeer, who was present, says: "The night was rendered memorable, not only by the massacre attending the general execution, but also by the début of Mlle. Lind in this country, who appeared as Alice. With the exception of the débutante, such a disgraceful exhibition was never before witnessed on the operatic stage.
"Would you like to compose an opera in three acts, The Chaste Suzannah, music by Meyerbeer?" "I should like some supper first. Madame Gobillot, I beseech you, give me something to eat. Thanks to your mountain air, I am almost starved." "But, Monsieur, we have been waiting two hours for you," retorted the landlady, as she made each stewpan dance in succession.
With her beauty and prodigious voice she shone like a meteor in the theatrical firmament. Meyerbeer found his Africanne realized in her and at his request she was engaged at the Opéra. Her engagement was made the occasion for a brilliant revival of Les Huguenots and Meyerbeer wrote new ballet music for it. To-day we have no idea of what Les Huguenots was then.
Meyerbeer returned to Venice, and in 1824 brought out "Il Crociato in Egitto" in that city, an opera which made the tour of Europe, and established a reputation for the author as the coming rival of Rossini, no one suspecting from what Meyerbeer had then accomplished that he was about to strike boldly out in a new direction.
He did not even read the notices sent by a press-cutting agency. He had a model with him. She amused him for the time, but it was unsatisfactory working on "The King of Ys" from photographs. He loathed it, and gave it up. One evening Gaston and Andree met at the Gare Montparnasse. Jacques was gone on, but Annette was there. Meyerbeer was there also, at a safe distance.
There is excuse at least, if not justification, to be found for his attacks on Meyerbeer and others; there are considerations to be taken into account while one reads with humiliation and pity the correspondence between Wagner and his benefactor, Liszt; but it is sad that an affectionate, humane, intensely human, to say nothing of an artistic, nature, could so blaspheme against the first principles of humanity.
The weak point of the opera is to be found in the tendency from which Meyerbeer was never safe, to drop into mere pretentiousness when he meant to be most impressive. In some of the choruses in the camp scene there is a great pretence at elaboration, with very scanty results, and the closing scena, which is foolish and wearisome, is an unfortunate concession to the vanity of the prima donna.
The late Sir Charles Hallé, probably retailing a story he had heard, relates in his reminiscences that when Heine heard of a young German musician coming from Russia to Paris to try his luck with an empty pocket, a half-finished opera and a few introductions from Meyerbeer amongst them one to a bankrupt theatre he clasped his hands and raised his eyes to heaven, in silent adoration before such unbounded and naïve self-confidence; and probably he had not then learnt the whole truth of the matter.
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